


At the Beginning

by locketofyourhair



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Mentions of PTSD, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, because if soulmates can happen why not lion magic mysticism, weird lion mystic bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 17:38:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8905081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/locketofyourhair/pseuds/locketofyourhair
Summary: It’s the first thing parents are supposed to teach their children: that the words mean nothing, that the marks don’t mean there is a match for you. The universe is cruel and cold, and plenty of people never meet the one whose writing is emblazoned on their skin. 
Keith doesn't believe in soulmates, no matter what his skin says. 
A soulmate AU where the words on your skin aren't always the first words you hear from your soulmate. Sometimes it takes time.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Nearly six months ago, I started about three soulmate AUs with essentially the same premise in three different fandoms. This just happens to be the one I finished first, as it's the one that will be jossed by canon. 
> 
> Title from "At the Beginning" from the _Anastasia_ soundtrack, which is pretty much my Keith/Shiro theme song while I was working on this fic. 
> 
> Thank you so much to riversburns for her help with the beta and the cheerleading. All other mistakes are mine.

The marks don’t actually mean anything. 

It’s the first thing parents are supposed to teach their children: that the words mean nothing, that the marks don’t mean there is a match for you. The universe is cruel and cold, and plenty of people never meet the one whose writing is emblazoned on their skin. Keith imagines that his parents weren’t soulmates; they were passing the time until they found someone or something clicked. 

It makes it easier that his is a line of gibberish, symbols that look like no kana he’s ever come across, in a red ink that reminds him too much of blood. 

It makes it easier to know from a young age that the line on his ribs is garbage and there are no happy endings. 

Everything else in his life just confirms it.

::

Once he gets into the garrison, marks are just a thing that people talk about. The other cadets are constantly showing them off, and Keith’s teeth clench when he meets two people who actually match, who are meant to be.

Worse are the stories of parents who met at their age, because so many of the Galaxy Garrison have parents who are soulmates, who loved each other and were meant to be together, and it’s fine. It’s not like foster homes or the orphanage, where the other kids all knew marks were bullshit, who had lived with parents who hated each other or never found that one. 

People ask to see his, and he shakes his head. It’s all crap, and the neat lines on wrists and arms and necks make sense, point to there being someone out there.

But he knows better. Keith’s been alone for as long as he can remember. There aren’t happy endings or summer weddings.

And then he meets Shiro, and he doesn’t care about the marks or about soulmates anymore. 

He knew of Shiro before he met him, of course. He’s legendary already, the kind of pilot every trainee wants to be. He’s kind in a way that makes him seem less real, spotting people in the weight rooms and sparring with cadets when he has time. He watches flight simulations with a smile instead of scorn. He’s nice.

Keith almost loses to his sparring partner when he hears Shiro say, “Watch your stance. You’re too tense, and you’ll make it easy for him to knock you off balance.” Something in his voice kicks a spark down Keith’s spine, enough to make him lose focus, to want to turn and look. He fights better than that; he knows better than that. 

He doesn’t lose, and Shiro grins when Keith knocks the bigger boy to the mat and pins him. “If he wanted to win as badly as you, he’d've had you.”

“Prove it,” Keith snaps, and his heart races with fury and emotions he doesn’t want to name. His face flushes. 

Shiro grins back, easy and calm. “Okay,” he says.

::

They aren’t each other’s soulmates. Shiro has a grouping of coordinates on his right forearm, and the handwriting looks a little like Keith’s, if he squints and pretends hard enough. He thinks the “3” is definitely his, even if the coordinates don’t exist on any star map either of them have ever seen.

It doesn’t matter, though. His own mark is still a line of gibberish. He catches himself pretending, as he and Shiro become friends, as Shiro follows him out into the desert where Keith can be alone. He’s been on his own for so long, and the barracks are so loud, so full of other cadets and their endless chatter. 

He begins to cherish the moments under the stars, with Shiro sitting beside him. They don’t talk much, but they don’t have to. It’s comfortable; it almost feels like how other people describe home. 

And then the Kerberos mission is announced, and everything comes crashing down around him. 

Shiro is so excited, all big smiles and hope. Keith smiles for him, and he reminds himself that this was bound to happen. Shiro makes him happy, and that can never last. 

Worse, Shiro believes in soulmates. Shiro believes old fairytales that it’s more than strange marks on the skin, that there’s some powerful magic that connects souls over distance and maybe even time

Their last night together, they lay under the stars, and Shiro holds up his arm. “Maybe they're out there,” he murmurs. “Maybe, after Kerberos, we’ll know more about what's out there.”

Keith snorts. “It's garbage,” he murmurs, because a cruel, dark part of himself doesn't want Shiro to find someone else. He wants Shiro to come home to him. 

Shiro sits up and looks at Keith, his face guarded. “Do you not...” Because some people are “cursed,” born without a match. 

“I'm not that lucky.”

Another moment passes, and then the moment Keith has been dreading, the moment that always comes up when you've known a person long enough. “Can I see yours?” Shiro asks.

Keith’s roommate asked. His flight team asked. He blew them off, said it didn't matter. The mark didn't make him a romantic; it had no bearing on his ability to run the simulator. 

Only Shiro can make him sit up and lift the hem of his shirt, high enough that the line of symbols is visible where it curls around his ribs. 

“I have no idea what it means,” he says, because it's the truth and he can already sees the question in Shiro’s eyes. 

He doesn't expect Shiro to touch it, for that delicate brush of fingers to make his skin burn. 

Shiro pulls his hand back, and Keith knows he feels it too, that it's not just him. “You’ll find someone,” Shiro says, and he sounds almost sad. “Almost everyone in my family found theirs, even in a small town in Hokkaido. Now with so many people looking, it should be easy.”

Keith turns away and drops his shirt. He doesn't want a soulmate; he wants Shiro. Even if he believed in fairy tales, he'd want Shiro to lean close and kiss him, to give him a lasting memory to hold for the years that Shiro will be in space. 

Instead he gets a hug that lasts a little too long, and he gets Shiro ruffling his hair. 

He gets Shiro teasing and promising, “When I get home, we’ll find her for you. Maybe she's an artist.”

Keith hugs Shiro again, tries to make himself remember the smell of his skin and shampoo. “Maybe,” he says through his teeth. He wants to remember the way Shiro hugs, to make this moment last under glass in his mind. There’s no time to say that, no, it would never be a “she,” that it should be Shiro.

If soulmates meant anything, it should always be Shiro.

::

And then Shiro dies, and Keith’s mark burns for two months straight, until he leaves the garrison and goes into the desert.

He dreams of cats, of deep lush jungles and volcanoes. He hears the name Voltron, in his dreams and feels it like a memory. He lets that quest consume him, push away the grief of losing Shiro. He forgets everything except trying to understand what Voltron is, what the carvings in the desert mean. 

It doesn’t last. The burning comes again, nearly a year to the day that Shiro’s ship was declared lost. His entire body feels tight, like the mark has caught flame and rages under skin. He can’t sleep, can barely eat, and he knows something is coming, can practically feel it in his teeth. 

Keith knows it’s luck that he’s out on his hovercraft when Shiro crash lands. It’s paranoia that has him prepared with explosives, in case the garrison wanted their vehicle back. 

And then he has Shiro back.

::

Things move too fast after that, from the lion to going through the wormhole. It feels like he stops to take a deep breath, and he’s suddenly hurtling through empty space before Red saves him. He takes a nap, and they’ve formed Voltron, are in the castle and on their way to the Balmera. He trains hard because he’s frankly terrified of what’s to come next and because he’s terrified that the Galra will take Shiro back.

Shiro is his, no matter what some stupid marks say. 

It’s easy to fall into old habits. He stays as close to Shiro as he dares, because what matters is that he’s here now. He has flashbacks now, and there are lines on his face that weren’t there before. Keith sometimes catches himself staring at the shock of white hair and, worse, at the way all Shiro’s new muscles move his clothes. 

He tries to be subtle, but he knows he fails when Pidge stops him one night. Her eyes are too serious. “Is Shiro your...?” she asks, without preamble and without easing into the subject. 

Keith hates that he flushes, first with embarrassment and then with a touch of anger. “Soulmates aren’t real,” he mutters, looking around them for Lance, like this is a practical joke. 

“My parents are. From what they’ve told me, Lance’s and Hunk’s parents are.” Pidge pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose, and she looks sad. “I know you’re in love with him.”

It’s like she used her lion to punch him, knocking him so hard that he can feel the ache in his bones. He doesn’t look at her, because he doesn’t want her to see any more. He feels stripped raw just from someone else saying it out loud. 

“I just... worry,” she says, and there’s a softness to her tone, almost an apology. “I want you both to be happy.”

“It’s fine, Pidge.”

::

The first time he’s injured badly enough that he needs a healing pod, Coran and Allura step away from him with horror in their eyes.

“What’s wrong,” Shiro says, because he’s the one trying to keep Keith from bleeding out. Galra use energy weapons, usually, but the planet’s slaves used spears. Keith had tried to cover their retreat, until they were in a position to form Voltron and kick ass.

He’d maybe underplayed how many times he’d been stabbed until he fell out of Red. 

“How was he branded?” Allura murmurs, and she comes back to herself first. Her fingers touch his mark, the symbols that he now knows are the Galra language, and it’s a cold touch, sharp and unwelcome. It makes Keith wince. “Is it fresh?”

“No, it’s... Humans have soul-matches. This mark explains where he’ll find his,” Shiro snaps. Keith wants to ask why they’re talking about this _now_. The world is turning grey around the edges, and there’s something he wanted to tell Shiro before he died. 

His tongue is too thick to say the words.

“Interesting. Never thought of looking for love there,” Coran says, and then they’re getting him into the healing pod. He lets himself blackout then, to sink into the cold touch of the healing tech. 

Shiro can explain; everything will be fine when he wakes up.

::

It’s not fine, not even in the slightest, because he feels Shiro slipping away more. Shiro sends Sendak into the cold grip of space and the palace attacks through Allura. They should be banding together, and instead Shiro grows distant.

He goes from being Shiro their friend to their leader. He still spars with Keith, but he has less time to talk, less time to just be. He’s shutting parts of himself down, enough that Keith knows he isn’t the only one who sees it. 

Pidge’s eyes follow Shiro after a particularly hard day of training, when he yelled orders far more than he offered encouragement. Then Hunk’s, when Shiro stops joining them for down time, preferring to go over new planets and alien history with Allura. It takes a while for Lance to notice, but he does, eventually, with a look at Keith. 

“What did you do?” he mouths while Shiro is dressing them both down for letting themselves get caught up in trying to one-up each other during sparring rather than working as a team.

“It’s not me,” Keith mouths back, even as Shiro glares at him and goes on about how they can’t risk actually hurting each other, like they’re children. 

Lance gives him a look, and just like that, Keith realizes that the other paladins have selected him to run interference when Shiro. 

As much as he hates them for being cowards, he kind of sees their point.

::

It’s still hard to get a moment alone with Shiro, when he’s pushing himself as hard as he is. He tries after sparring and again after dinner, and finally chases Shiro into Shiro’s damn private quarters because he doesn’t know what else to do.

Shiro stares when Keith slips in the door before it can close. “Is something wrong?” he asks, as if they were never friends, and Keith can’t stand it one more minute. 

“We’re worried about you,” he says, his tone far more insistent than he means. He leans against the closed door and just stares at him. “It’s been a rough month or so, and you’ve been...” Keith waves his hand as if that is going to explain it. 

Shiro sighs and sits on his bunk. “I’ve had a lot on my mind,” he murmurs. He rubs his Galra arm, and Keith sighs. 

Things have been weird since Sendak. Keith kind of wishes he had been the one to press the button, to send Sendak into space, to share Shiro the guilt. 

“You used to talk to me when things got stressful,” Keith murmurs. He purses his lips because he doesn’t want to look hurt. “I’m still your friend, Shiro.”

Shiro laughs, something harsh and brittle. “I know what you are, Keith.”

“And?” Keith had grown up in orphanages and foster homes. The _what_ hurt, but if Shiro was going to be an ass, Keith wasn’t going to let him see how much that hurt him. 

“Keith, don’t you get it? We’re in space, on a giant, alien castle. Your mark is an alien language that Coran and Allura both recognize.”

Keith blinks, and he frowns at Shiro. “This is about my mark?” 

He touches his side and frowns. Honestly, until Allura and Coran saw them, he’d forgotten about them. They mean nothing to him.

“She’s out here, Keith,” Shiro whispers, like the words are cutting through him. He won’t look at him, has his arms crossed over his chest. “You can have that happy ending.”

“Shiro,” Keith murmurs, because none of this makes sense. “Shiro, you know I don’t believe--”

“I do, because I’ve seen it. Keith, you deserve that happiness,” Shiro whispers, each word like broken glass. He pushes for the door to open. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Shiro--” Keith tries to reach him, because he hates the pain in Shiro’s grey eyes, but Shiro pushes him out of the room without another word. The door slides closed and Keith hears the locking chime. 

Shiro doesn’t want to talk to him anymore.

::

Keith goes into the navigation room and watches the stars. Allura is at the helm, and she doesn’t comment when he sits on the platform. Keith has never once asked about where Earth is, never asked to see the star map.

They stay in comfortable silence for a time, until Allura engages auto-pilot and sits next to him, her hands folding gracefully in her lap. Keith tries to sit up a little straighter. Allura has that effect on him, to make himself look a little less like sloppy human who was kicked out of the garrison, even if he’s pretty sure she doesn’t care. 

“Did you talk to Shiro?” 

Keith sighs, nodding, but there’s nothing to say. “He wouldn’t talk about what’s been bugging him. He wanted to talk about my mark instead.”

Allura hums softly. “Yes, Shiro and Hunk both explained the traditions of the marks to me while you were healing. I was surprised to see yours. You know it’s Galra, correct?”

Keith pauses and pulls up his shirt, twisting to look at the angry red symbols. “I hadn’t really thought about what it could mean...” He can see the familiar curves of the language now, even if he can’t read it. “Which just goes to show how the mark is bullshit.”

She laughs, clapping her hands. “I confess, when they explained the human concept of soul-matching, I had a similar reaction. Alteans fall in love in a way that must seem sloppy to you humans.”

“No, it’s not--Lots of humans never find their match, and some people don’t have marks at all. We fall in love the sloppy way too.” He shrugs. “I don’t really think they mean that you have to fall in love with that person. I sort of think they’re junk, you know.”

Allura shifts, then she looks directly at Keith, her eyes eerie in the blue light. “Hunk showed me his mark, and he says he knows who is match is. He seemed content.”

“His parents were probably a match, like Shiro’s. They tend to believe it more. I didn’t grow up like the others,” Keith says mildly, because he really does not want to get into his own past, not with someone who lost her entire people. It’s over now; he has the other paladins, the princess and Coran. 

Shiro.

“Ah. Shiro didn’t show me his mark, though.” 

He looks at Allura, and then he looks down at his own arm, where he remembers the numbers on Shiro’s skin. “The Galra took it,” he says slowly, because of course. He’s such an idiot. 

Shiro believes in the marks, and he’s lost his. There is no way to absolutely know if he’ll ever find his match. Keith’s vision goes red for a moment, a flash of fury at another fucking thing that the Galra stole from Shiro. The list never seems to end.

“Do you think that’s why he is so concerned with yours? Shiro cares for you, Keith. He would want you to be happy.” Allura’s tone is soft, her fingers reaching out to touch where Keith’s mark is. He lets her, because she’s not human and doesn’t understand how odd that is. She’s curious.

Keith looks away because even to Allura, it’s hard to say. “He makes me happy,” he whispers. “I don’t care what the mark says.”

“Ah,” Allura says, and when he turns back, her face is nearly unreadable. There’s a twinkle to her eyes though. “Perhaps you should tell him that. I think it will work out if you trust each other.”

::

Then Allura gets captured and there’s really no time to think about it, for anything to work out, Shiro being so obsessed with his mark all of a sudden. There’s an all out assault to try and survive, and Red growling in his head while he takes on fucking Zarkon of all people.

Like Zarkon personally took the arm, like he used the black bayard to slice Shiro’s shot at happiness away. Keith lets his fury go, lets it fuel him, and it feels so good to him and Red both. So much of fighting is control and focus, but Zarkon laughs and swears Keith fights like a Galra and no. 

No, he doesn’t, and he’ll make Zarkon pay for every time Shiro gets a haunted look in his eye. 

He still gets his ass kicked. And probably would have died if Shiro hadn’t appeared at the last moment to get Keith to safety. In battle, there is no tension, no hurt in Shiro’s eyes that Keith knows he didn’t put there.

“I’ve got you, buddy,” he says over the comms, while Keith tries to reach Red, to bring her back to--not life, because he can feel the buzz on Red in the back of his mind. She’s there, but she’s too hurt to move. She needs to rest, and the thought cuffs Keith, like he’s her cub and he’s misbehaving. 

It should be safe in the hangar, but it’s not. Shiro is breathing hard in Black. Keith doesn’t want to make Red let him out yet, not until the rest of them are safe.

And then they fall out and into space.

::

He wakes up to the patter of rain on Red’s nose, and Shiro’s voice over the comms, whispering, “Keith, wake up, please,” like a prayer.

“‘m up, I’m up,” Keith groans, and his whole body aches like he’s done every training floor three times in a row. “Where are we?”

“No idea. Black’s navigation system took damage in the fall.” Shiro is breathing hard, and Keith can’t get Red’s comm video up to see his face. She’s okay, barely, but the computers are still almost entirely offline. “Can Red get her particle barrier up?

Keith shifts his focus from the comm to the rest of Red’s systems. “How long have I been out?” 

Shiro is quiet for too long. “We couldn’t raise either of you for over a day.” Something rattles on the other line of the comm. “We pulled you guys to safety, but if Red’s still broken... we need to get somewhere safe.”

He freezes, because he can’t imagine what that must have been like for Shiro. He can’t imagine how silent that was, away from the others, and unable to hear anything from Red. Keith knows she’s working on repairing her systems because that’s just what the Lions do, but it takes time. Shiro had no way of knowing if Red and Keith were both dead, not without doing more damage to Keith’s lion. 

“We’re here,” Keith says, as calmly as he can. “We’re here, and we’re going to be okay.”

“Keith, I don’t know where the others are.” Shiro’s voice only has a slight waver, only the slightest hint of stress. “I set up my emergency beacon, but we fell out of a wormhole.”

“And space is infinitely filled with things that want to kill us,” Keith finishes. “You do any scouting?”

Shiro goes quiet again, and Keith knows that was a stupid question. The Galra have slaughtered their way across galaxies, and Shiro was a lone human possibly carting around Keith’s coffin. Keith listens to the rain and to Shiro breathing as he tries to decide what he wants to say. 

“Red’s navigation system is up,” he says finally, as if that helps them at all. 

“Does she know where we are?”

“Technically she can plot us in space, but she doesn’t really have any good maps of this solar system.” Keith eases himself up out of the chair and starts to look in the emergency packs Allura and Shiro insist stay stocked. His emergency beacon is cracked, probably broken, but most of his food looks good. There’s medical supplies and tarps, the extra knives and whetstone Keith had slipped into his, and underneath it all, he finds what he’s looking for. 

It was Pidge’s idea to make sure each kit had a close approximation of a notebook and pens, in case the worst happened and their lions were completely nonfunctional. At the time, her argument seemed macabre, that tablets eventually lose power. If they get stranded, making maps of their location, recording their findings, will help the others. 

Even if the paladin doesn’t make it.

“Keith?” Shiro calls, and the comm video is still trying to come up. There’s a grainy glimpse of Shiro’s face before it goes out again.

“I’m here,” Keith calls, putting everything he can into the pack. He keeps the notebook out, jotting down where they are before he turns off Red’s navigation system, routing the power to her particle barrier. There’s a deeply unhappy growl in the back of his mind, but he shakes his head. “You need to concentrate on getting better. We’re going to need you.”

“Come on,” he says to Shiro, tucking the notebook under his breastplate. “We should try to find real shelter.”

::

The rain looks like it does at home, but it falls in steaming sheets as they move cautiously away from where the lions are hidden. The planet is quiet and near-overgrown, and the atmosphere--while safe for them--is oppressive.

There are no sounds besides the rain, and Keith is almost positive that he hears a river. There are no animals, no calls of alien language. It’s the rain and the shifting of their armor as they pick their way through the forest. They walk for at least an hour before they find an overgrown building, crumbling under the weight of decades the forest overgrowing it. 

Shiro pushes at the door as the rain falls harder, hotter, and they both have their helmets on again. It won’t budge, and when he tries to cut through it with his Galra arm, it flickers once, twice, and then falls limp at Shiro’s side.

“Does that hurt?” Keith asks, his bayard already a sword at his side. 

“Sort of,” Shiro says, and his shoulder rolls but the arm doesn’t move, the fingers hanging limp. His mouth presses into a thin line. “Haggar did something to it. I can’t feel it anymore.”

Keith bites his tongue on _what else could go wrong_ because there are a million things. Instead, he slices through vines and branches, trying to find a way for the door to open, because he’s not sure how much longer their armor can last against the downpour of boiling rain. There are holes in the undersuit of his armor, and where the rain catches, he’s sure he can feel blisters.

Finally, _finally_ , he uncovers a hand panel, Galra written above it.

“Shit,” Shiro mumbles.

“If they were still here, I think they’d be on us by now.” Keith hacks a little more, until he’s sure that the door will open. 

“I don’t think I can open it,” Shiro says, moving his Galra arm with the other. The screen flickers to life under his touch, symbols that neither one of them can read flickering past. His palm does nothing, the symbols silently scrolling across the screen.

“Wait, Keith,” Shiro says, and he drops the Galra arm to touch the symbols. “Are you reading this?”

“No,” Keith says as he presses his hand against the panel, and the doors groan, creak, and then slide open a foot or so. 

Then the panel goes dark again, and thunder booms overhead. 

“Keith, your mark--It was your mark.” Shiro grips his shoulder, and Keith is almost relieved. He doesn’t like that his hand opens Galra doors or closes them, that he can make their tech work. It shouldn’t work for him like it can Shiro, but it does. 

Soulmarks are easier to deal with.

Keith glances at the dead panel, then at Shiro. “I don’t care. We have to get inside before we find out what thunder and lightning do to humans here.”

“Keith, she’s here, though. On the planet.” Shiro’s smile is wide, bright, and completely fake as he lets Keith crowd him inside dark opening. “That means there’s life here.”

“We’ll worry about that when the storm passes,” Keith hisses, and he digs through their pack for a light, for something to start a fire with. They can’t risk walking very far into the blackness of the shelter until they can see if there are stairs, an elevator shaft, or an abandoned cache of explosives, ready to go off at any minute.

Except there’s nothing. For all the security, they’re in a leaking room with empty containers and bare shelves. “Storage shed,” Keith says, and his body sags a little with relief. 

He sets the pack on the floor and begins pulling out anything that could be useful. They’ll have to sleep on a tarp, and Keith will have to take the night watch until they can get back to the lions and see if there are blasters or something, a weapon that Shiro could use while his arm was offline. They can share a water pack tonight and there are enough Altean rations to last them at least a month. 

“When the rain lets up, we’ll explore,” Shiro says, and Keith see that he’s bothered that he can’t be more of a help, as if saving Keith’s life from Zarkon was just another day. “We should try to find a way to reach the castle.”

“Our distress beacon is on,” Keith murmurs, pulling off his gauntlets and shoulder guards. “We should stay in one place so they can find us.” His eyes are heavy suddenly, the worries of the day crashing down on him all at once. 

Shiro sighs, and he sits down on the tarp. Keith stretches out beside him. It’s too hot with the rain to start a fire, and Shiro’s eyes are fixated on the sliver of light. “You really don’t care if you meet her?” he asks, and there’s a softness to his voice, a sadness. 

Keith reaches out and touches Shiro’s Galra hand, twisting his fingers with the cold immobile ones. “Shiro, even if my soulmate is here, it’s not going to be a woman,” he murmurs. 

Shiro’s breathing goes sharp, and Keith curls against him. He’s exhausted, and the rush of needing shelter has leaked from his body, reminding him of all the injuries he was trying to forget. “Knife’s in the pack,” Keith murmurs, because he can’t stave off sleep much longer and he knows Shiro won’t relax without a weapon.

::

When he wakes, the rain has passed and Shiro is starting a small fire outside their shelter. He’s taken off his armor, and the planet has two moons rising in its hazy sky.

“I scouted a little more, but there’s nothing, just birds.” Shiro hands the knife over to Keith. There’s a scratch on his hand, clumsily bandaged. “Big birds.”

Keith scowls but doesn’t chide Shiro for leaving the safety of their shelter. Shiro’s Galra arm is malfunctioning, but he’s still _Shiro,_ Galra-Champion and one of the best officers to ever come from the Garrison. 

“Do they mind that we’re here?” Keith asks, scanning the skies even though he knows not all birds fly. It’s habit.

Shiro shrugs. “They didn’t follow me out of the forest. I think we’ll be safe.”

Keith summons his bayard anyway and sits beside Shiro. The fire pops, and they don’t speak, even as Shiro carefully, as if he’s afraid he’ll frighten Keith away, lays his left hand over Keith’s right.

He lets his head rest against Shiro’s shoulder and looks to the sky again. It’s too hazy to see the stars and Keith has no spirituality, but he maybe asks the moons to watch out for them and to let the princess find them.

::

It rains every day on the planet and sometimes into the night. The rain is always warm in the morning but by mid-afternoon, they have to take shelter or risk being burned. Most mornings are spent exploring, looking for a water source deep enough that they might be able to strip out of their suits and bathe, and the afternoons are spent trying to fix Shiro’s arm.

Neither of them wishes Pidge or Hunk were here, at least not out loud, but they don’t make much progress. After seven day/night cycles, because they both realize early on that the planet doesn’t have anything close to a 24 hour day, Shiro can only barely move his fingers. The arm is still sluggish, ignoring his attempts to bend it at the elbow or wrist, and he can’t use it as a weapon. 

Keith writes dutifully in the notebook, though Shiro is confident that they’ll be found before they run out of water or the Galra track them. Keith just waves him off, making another note. 

He sort of hates this planet with its boiling rain, but the easy time alone with Shiro is nice. He doesn’t put that in the notes, though. If they die here, Pidge is not going to get the privilege of mocking their ghosts. 

They practice Shiro’s knife-fighting skills by firelight, Keith using his sword while Shiro tries to attack and defend left-handed. Shiro adapts well, but Keith is still worried. He doesn’t think Shiro can use his shield and the knife at the same time. What if they really need to defend themselves?

Shiro huffs a laugh when Keith tries to bring it up. “Let me worry about that, Keith,” he says, like always. He doesn’t exactly pull rank, but the thread of that is there in his voice. 

Keith looks through the dark forest, and now that he knows to listen, he can hear the bird’s weird trills and growls. They aren’t comforting. “If something happens to you--”

“Nothing is going to happen to me, Keith,” and Shiro steps forward and Keith doesn’t know what’s changed, why Shiro keeps touching him now, like he would before Kerberos. He tells himself that it’s because they’re alone again, that without the others who are so much more tactile, Shiro misses contact. 

But in the firelight, with Shiro’s eyes searching his, Keith doesn’t believe it.

::

On the ninth day, they get up before sunrise to walk back to the lions in the light drizzle. Keith breathes easier when Red is fixed enough to send down a line, to lift him into her pilot’s seat. Most of her systems are still running on backup, but her contented growl thunders through his mind while he checks the progress of her repairs.

“Is Black’s navigational system back and running?” Keith asks over the comms, because it’s been over a week since he’s seen Shiro and it feels like an absence even if he’s just in his lion.

He watches Shiro over the comm link as he calls it up, and Shiro goes pale, then flushed. “Yeah, she’s got them running again.”

Keith makes a small affirmative noise. “Anything up on the radar?” He hasn’t turned his on, because Red is just barely ready to fly now. It’s going to be another week at least before he’s comfortable getting her off planet.

“Nothing yet,” Shiro says, and his voice is strained, tight. “I don’t think the Galra are in this solar system anymore. There’s nothing present but space.”

Keith sighs, and Red seems to understand, to know how much he was hoping that there would be a message, a blip on their radar that could be the castle, something. “I guess we should get back to camp, then.”

Shiro shakes his head. “I need a minute, and I’m going to try--I want to try reaching out. Allura can sense the lions, and maybe they can sense her.”

It’s not the stupidest idea that Keith’s ever heard, particularly considering there are so few other options. He doesn’t relish the idea of taking the lions off world if they don’t know where they’re going. This planet feels safe. 

So he relaxes in the chair and tries to empty his mind, like he used to when they first worked to form Voltron. They need fewer of Coran’s little psychic adventures now, when they are all used to working in tandem, so it’s a struggle to just let go when he’s aware that he and Shiro are alone, that Shiro is--in effect--injured, when Red isn’t at her top capability. But he tries to Shiro’s sake, imagining them flying through space. 

Red seems to hold her breath and he feels her through the bond, and he feels Black, too. He feels Shiro, and somehow that makes him feel less ridiculous. He lets his mind sink into the warm comfort of Shiro’s and numbers flash before his eyes, numbers he should know but doesn’t, and he sees the panel again, the symbols flashing out. He seems himself, the way his face went slack with sleep on the first night, and his hand in Shiro’s.

For just a tick, he feels Shiro’s breathing shudder, feels his body spasm in Black’s chair. 

And then it’s like they’re falling but out in space, hands reach out to grab theirs. He opens his eyes to a kaleidoscope of color and the smell of Allura’s shampoo. 

_I see you_ , her mind says over the comms, even though that shouldn’t work. _We’re coming_. 

“Magic is so fucking weird,” Keith says with a laugh, because what else can he say? He knows that for a moment, Allura’s hand was in his, but she’s galaxies away. For a moment, his essence--or whatever Coran would call it, probably something more embarrassing--was entwined with Shiro’s, and Allura could see them. 

His mark _burns_ under his suit. It feels like it’s going to scorch through the fabric, press Galra symbols into the metal of Red’s chair. He’s afraid to touch it, even though he knows it’s going to be cool to the touch.

Shiro’s laughter sounds just a shaky, but there’s a hysterical note to it. “I think she’ll be here in a day or so. I couldn’t hold it any longer. You?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Keith says, even though now that he’s completely back into his own skin, he’s embarrassed. He never wants to do that again, because what if next time Shiro looks into his mind--like he could see into Shiro’s? 

He turns off the vid comm and tells himself it isn’t weird to linger in Red’s chair for another tick or so. She’s a comforting presence in his mind, almost like a mystic older sister, and she wants him to be safe. He can’t be safe where she isn’t watching him. 

Except eventually, the rain will turn too hot again, and Keith wants to try to get one of the tarps set up to catch water. They still have plenty, but they haven’t bathed since the battle with Zarkon and Keith would just like to wash enough that he can’t smell himself anymore. He’s positive Shiro has the same thought process.

::

The tarp catches enough water to splash onto their skin, to rub over their faces, and while they’re far from clean, it’s almost comfortable to stretch out beside Shiro on the tarp. “Hopefully, tomorrow we’re back in the castle for a real bath,” he murmurs.

Shiro wraps their fingers together, and Keith lets him, doesn’t even bother pretending that he isn’t already sitting close enough for their shoulders to brush. This planet is never actually cold, not enough that he could pretend he’s doing it to keep warm, but Shiro actually moves his Galra arm onto Keith’s chest. Shiro’s fingers curl in the fabric of Keith’s suit, and he knows the effort that takes. 

“Shiro?” he asks, and Shiro shushes him. 

“Tomorrow,” he says, and then he presses his lips against Keith’s forehead. “When we’re home and safe, we’ll talk.”

Keith doesn’t sleep that night, because now he’s sure that Shiro saw into his mind. Shiro saw, and he knows Keith’s feelings. 

His mark still burns.

::

It takes mere hours for Allura to find them, as if now that their minds have brushed hers, she can pinpoint them through galaxies and star systems like it’s nothing. Her soft voice wakes them in the middle of the night, when both moons are still full and bright above her as she stands in the doorway. “Paladins, your rescue is here.”

Keith blinks at her, and he thinks she’s not there, some crazed illusion from being this close to Shiro all night. “Allura? You’re here already.”

“It’s been almost eighteen of your earth hours.” She rushes forward and hugs them both, not caring how awkward it is to find them lying on the ground. “We were so worried,” she whispers, and there are tears in her voice. “We knew how badly damaged the Red Lion was, and you were the first to fall through the wormhole.”

“Are the others all right?” Keith asks, because he doesn’t like the phrasing of “first.”

Her bright eyes seem to glow in the moonlight. “We’ve recovered Pidge, but if once we’re on the ship and you’ve had a chance to be checked over, we were hoping that you two and Pidge could reach out for the others, like you did for me.”

That gets them both up, because Lance and Hunk are missing. They’re on a relatively safe planet--huge murder birds notwithstanding--but that doesn’t mean that Lance and Hunk are. “Where is Pidge?”

“Loading Black and Red into the Castle. She wants to look over Red, because she was terrified you’d try to fly her in that condition--but she’s mostly repaired,” Allura says, with a terrible smile that means she knew the lions could heal that much damage themselves.

“I’ll need my arm looked at too,” Shiro says, “after a debriefing. We haven’t been able to make it work yet.”

Allura nods. “Pidge and Coran will work on it. Something can be done, I’m sure.” Keith’s eyes sting and he hadn’t let himself think how much he missed the others, only how grateful he was that he was here with Shiro, that he knew they were both alive.

Shiro grabs his hand and squeezes it before he’s grabbing the pack. “We’re going home,” he says, like there was any doubt after yesterday, like Keith is a child. “We’re going to find them.”

Keith should take his hand away, especially when Allura raises an eyebrow and looks between them, but he can’t. He lets Shiro lead him away from the little shelter and to Allura’s pod. When they’re inside and safe, Keith pulls Shiro’s hand into his lap and covers it with his other. 

He doesn’t know what’s going on, but if it’s something that’s public, something they can show the princess, then Keith is going to take advantage. 

Maybe they won’t have to talk about it. Maybe Shiro just knows how Keith feels from their minds linking.

::

They break apart when Pidge launches herself at them, and Keith doesn’t exactly cry but his eyes are definitely welling and misty. It makes him feel better that Pidge is openly sobbing and Shiro has tear tracks on his cheeks as the three of them pull each other close.

“I thought I lost everyone,” Pidge says, and Keith winces and tightens his hold of her. 

He hadn’t thought what this would be like, knowing that the Holts are still out there and that the other paladins had been lost to space. He had Shiro; for a while, Pidge was probably alone. He maybe presses a kiss to the top of her head, because she’s more than just another soldier in this fight. 

Pidge laughs when Shiro does the same thing, and she kisses both of their cheeks, wrinkling her nose. “You both need to shave.”

Shiro scratches a hand over his stubbled jaw. They’d been using another of Keith’s knives to shave, but clearly it hadn’t been enough. Funny how they’d both stopped noticing after a while. “We need showers.”

Pidge grins at them. “Well, I wasn’t going to say it, but.”

And just like that, it’s as though they’d never left. She fills them in on what happened to her as they walk towards the bedrooms, her time floating through space and trying to call the other lions or the castle. She managed to ping Allura five days ago. 

No one wants to think about how lucky they’ve been, or that Hunk and Lance might not have landed on a safe planet, that they might not be waiting for rescue, but the way Pidge hovers when they come to Shiro’s door speaks volumes. 

“I’ll, um, wait in the kitchens, I guess. I’m not a cook, but I’m sure Coran will get some goo ready for you guys,” she murmurs, shifting her weight from foot to foot.

Shiro squeezes her shoulder with his good arm. “As soon as we’ve showered and debriefed, we can try searching for them. I promise.”

Keith steps back, because they’re at Shiro’s room, and his own is only one corridor over. He knows Pidge wants to walk him there; he fully intends to let her do it, for both their sakes. 

Except Shiro steps forward then, and his good hand curls around Keith’s neck, pulling their mouths together. This kiss is hard, possessive, and Keith hesitates only a tick before he’s sinking into it, his fingers finding their way into Shiro’s hair. It’s like everything drops away: the hallway, Pidge, the stress of not knowing where Lance and Hunk are. 

Shiro makes a soft noise into Keith’s mouth, and Keith chases it, letting the kiss become more aggressive, less questioning. His other hand is at Shiro’s back, holding them together, and he can’t get enough of this, of the prickling feeling of Shiro’s stubble and of the way Shiro’s hand tightens on his neck, possessive and wonderful. 

It’s when Pidge mumbles something and runs off that they pull apart, when Keith stares up at Shiro. “What--”

“We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ll talk.” Shiro kisses him again, quick and chaste, and he’s stepping back into his room. “It’s just going to be a while until we’re alone again, and...” There’s a flush on his face that Keith finds intriguing and adorable at the same time. “And I couldn’t wait.”

He curls a hand at Shiro’s hip. “We could spend some time alone now. We do both need showers...”

The flush on Shiro’s face deepens, almost hiding his scar, but he shakes his head and takes Keith’s hand away. “Tempting,” he says, and there’s a tone to his voice that makes Keith shiver.

“But the others need us.” Keith doesn’t even mind, because his lips still tingle from Shiro’s kiss and there’s a darkness to Shiro’s eyes that promises _later_.

“And we really should talk before.” Shiro kisses Keith one more time, like he can’t help himself, and then his fingers brush over Keith’s soulmark and it’s like the air leaves the hallway, like everything becomes Shiro’s fingers there, even through his clothing. 

Shiro disappears behind his door before Keith can recover, before he can say anything, and it’s not fair. His lips burn like his mark, and he needs to know, to demand, what’s changed? 

He’s almost afraid of the answer.

::

Pidge gets Shiro’s arm up and moving in under thirty minutes while they’re wolfing down as much goo as they can. It still doesn’t blaze to life, but Shiro can use it again. That’s enough for the moment, because they’re down two lions and they need to focus on that.

Shiro’s dark eyes follow him, and Keith knows that Pidge sees--worse, that _Coran_ sees--because of the way they don’t talk at all. Coran just _smiles_ at them, like he’s literally going to start fucking chortling and twirling his mustache. 

The silence is almost oppressive, because all it does is serve as a reminder that Lance and Hunk are missing still. Lance and his terrible jokes or Hunk and his musings about home and their families, how much they’ve already missed. 

Keith squeezes Pidge’s shoulder when he’s finally full, because he can’t imagine what this is like for her. He’s never had a family; the closest thing to a friend he’s ever had is Shiro. Pidge has lost her family and her squad mates, and her mother probably thinks Pidge is dead. 

“We should try now,” Keith says, if only because he wants Pidge to look less lost and for Coran to stop giving him that goddamned smug smile.

::

Sitting in Red and looking at Shiro and Pidge on video comm feels almost right, almost like it’s enough, but the fact that they are quite literally without their legs looms large over all of them. As much as Lance pisses him off, Keith can admit that the three of them are far too serious--far too inclined to think and not reach out when they should--and they need his stupid jokes. They need Hunk’s easy smiles and open arms, how he’s always ready to support a friend.

Keith eases back in his chair, and he listens to Pidge breathing. Shiro is harder to hear, but he can practically feel Shiro reaching out already, even before Allura takes position between the three lions. It’s too easy to reach out to him, to let his eyes close and feel Shiro in his lion. 

He tries not to fall back into the blur of images, but Shiro murmurs his name and he’s lost. He’s lost in a blur of seeing himself but not seeing, where his smiles are softer and his eyes are warm. He seems something in himself that Keith knows isn’t there, some inherent kindness that the world has more than beaten out of him. 

And he sees his marks, sees Shiro’s bare right fingers tracing them, from before Kerberos, from before everything really blew up in their faces. 

Keith can’t breathe for a tick, his entire heart too big for his chest because he sees Shiro’s mark, a hazy memory, and there’s such joy there. 

He wants to chase that feeling, because it can’t be possible. They can’t be _that_ stupid. 

Of course they’re that stupid. Of course it’s that simple. On Earth, they couldn’t have known. On Earth, they weren’t ready, but here, in the castle, as paladins of Voltron, they have each other and it’s exactly as it should be.

“Oh,” he says, his voice so soft. “Shiro, I--” He doesn’t know what he’s going to say, because this explains so much, how Shiro changed after the planet. How Shiro has been so happy.

He believes in soulmates. He figured it out first, and he waited for Keith to figure it out too. He wanted Keith to feel it, to know for sure.

Shiro’s laugh fills his mind, and his tongue is heavy. He doesn’t know what to say first, because there’s so much he needs to tell Shiro. 

Except Allura is there now, and her mind pulls them back to focus, away from the hazy glow of emotion and back to a mission. It’s as if they all standing together in front of her, and Pidge is there now at Shiro’s other side. 

“Wow,” Pidge murmurs, and he can’t tell if she’s saying or thinking it, but he doesn’t care because when Allura flings them into space, it hurts. 

He’s aware of his hand taking Shiro’s, and at Shiro’s other side, Pidge does the same. He can feel Shiro’s warmth even though he’s in the Black Lion, and he’s aware of Black in a way that’s heady and unreal, of Green while she winds around Pidge. She doesn’t like that this hurts her paladin.

They can feel the coldness of space, of the solar system where Allura has a flash of something. Pidge shivers, and Keith tries to push some of the warmth, some of the joy from before into her. They have to hold the connection and she can see her breath in the lion. 

He has a flash of his own face again; Allura snaps, “Hold, Shiro.”

Shiro’s mind pulls back from Keith’s, and it’s like being hit with a blizzard. He can feel Pidge shaking again, see Green growling at Allura in his mind’s eye. 

“We have to break off,” someone says. It might even be him. The coldness is reaching up into his lungs. It’s hard to breathe. Red wants to swipe out at Allura; it’s everything to remind her _No, she’s ours._ His hand starts to drop from Shiro’s. In his mind’s eye, he can see Pidge stumble.

Then there’s a flash of heat in their minds, and he knows without asking that all four of them see it, see the desert sun and baking sand. See Hunk’s dark eyes round with fear and concern as they touch his mind. 

He’s in his lion; he’s alone but safe, uninjured. “Guys?” he whispers, sitting up straighter. 

The connection drops then, Allura sliding to her knees in the middle of the lions. There is frost on her suit, and Keith can feel it on his eyelashes. 

“I don’t know if we can risk that again,” Pidge whispers over the comms. 

Keith means to respond, but the world fuzzes out and then goes black.

::

Keith hates the healing pods, hates the weird boneless and chilled feeling you have when you first step out in the ill-fitting white pajamas. He’s been lucky; he hasn’t been in them nearly as much as he probably should, but Allura tends to mistake bleeding injuries for the only serious sorts humans have.

None of them are in a rush to disabuse her of that notion.

Worse is the feeling that he’s the first one out, because the room is too quiet. There’s the steady hum of the pods while they do their work and his own breathing, and then a soft, “Ah, should have guessed that a Red Paladin would run hotter than the others.”

He turns and sees Coran, whose face seems greyer in the blue lights. He produces a blanket and a glass of something hot and vile. Keith takes both without complaining because it’s only then that he realizes there are three healing pods operating besides his own. Allura was hurt, too.

They all fight harder for each other because they’re the only humans in this part of the universe, the only ones who can fully grok their Earth references. Sometimes it seems like the five of them are alone in the universe, and only they know how wonderful the desert could smell after rain, how both hot and wonderful sriracha sauce could be, what it’s like be rolled by an ocean wave and have salt burn in your nose. 

Keith can’t imagine what that’s like when it’s really only you and one other person with those memories, when everyone else is dust.

If he was more comforting, he might even ask how Coran is doing, what it was like to watch from the outside. But he’s not, and Coran doesn’t seem in the mood. Lance is the one who seems to get him best, seems to be able to make Coran laugh the most outside of Allura, and Lance is still lost. 

So instead, Keith sips his horrible drink--which doesn’t even have the familiar buzz of nunvill to it--and sits by where Coran works. He can watch and keep vigil with him, can keep his eyes glued to Shiro’s placid face in the pod.

Keith doesn’t know what happened, and he doesn’t care. Shiro isn’t allowed to die, not when things are starting to click into place. He doesn’t realize that his hands are shaking, that all of him is shaking, until Coran touches his shoulder and pours more of the vile stuff into Keith’s cup.

“There’s a good deal of raw data to sort through,” Coran says, humming to himself a bit. “I think when the Princess wakes up, we’ll work through it. I have a good feeling.”

“Good,” Keith says, pressing his lips into a line. He looks over at Shiro’s pod again, tries not to focus on the flicker of panic that shoots through him because Shiro is in a pod at all. 

He’s been so stupid; of course it was Shiro all along. Shiro has always made his mark burn, and Shiro was the center of his world even when he thought Shiro was _dead_. And it only makes sense that there has to be some matches out in the world, even if Keith still thinks the whole thing is bullshit. Someone has to have a happily ever after for the legends to spread.

Of course, happily ever after looks an awful like even more bullshit when your soulmate is in a healing pod.

“Shiro will be fine, Keith,” Coran murmurs, and Keith blinks. He hadn’t realized that he’d spoke out loud.

“Sorry. Soulmate shit,” he says, and he hunkers down in his blanket. The room feels cold, and his limbs are heavy. He glances down at the cup in his hands. “Did you dose me?”

“Technically, you shouldn’t have healed so quickly. You nearly froze to death.” Coran sounds not at all sorry. “So I may have added a little sleeping draught to your drink. Sleep is very important to human covalence, according to what we’ve seen.” 

Keith wants to be angry, but instead he just feels pleasant and sleepy, almost like he’s happy-drunk. “Didn’t mean to wake up early,” he mumbles. “I’ll work on it for next time.”

“Don’t worry,” Coran says. “Adjustments will be made. Humans are a fascinatingly varied species.” He’s almost cheerful as he takes the cup from Keith’s hands and helps him lay out on the cold metal floor. “I’ll find you a pillow, and everything will be tip-top, yeah?”

“Thanks, Coran,” Keith murmurs, turning his head for once last glimpse of Shiro before the world fuzzes out again.

::

When he comes to, he’s not in a healing pod. He’s not in his room, either, because he has the stars from home scratched in the metal above his bed, and the ceiling here is smooth except for a few dents, where a fist has struck metal over and over. He turns over in sheets that don't smell like him and looks around Shiro’s room.

There’s a tray on the desk, and Shiro slumped down in the chair. He’s trying to sleep, but Keith isn’t fooled at all. As soon as he shifts on the sheets again, one of Shiro’s eyes crack open, and his entire body seems to snap to attention. 

“You’re awake,” he says, and he gets up from the chair and sits on the edge of the bed. “I was worried.” His fingers run over Keith’s hair, and his smile is soft, lips dark from his teeth worrying the skin. 

“I woke up before you. Coran dosed me.”

Shiro grins. “He told us. He was very proud of himself.”

Keith wrinkles his nose, because of course Coran is pleased that he got to mad-scientist a sleeping draught. “What exactly...happened?”

“We’re not sure. You and Pidge were almost frozen through, and Allura and I weren’t much better. Coran insisted we all go into the healing pods, and it seemed stupid to fight with him. I came to after Allura, and she helped me get you here. Pidge woke up an hour ago, and Allura is watching Pidge. Coran is warming nunvill, should we need some.”

Keith laughs. “I’m fine, thank you. No more mystery Coran concoctions for me.”

“We’re going towards Hunk soon, after we check in. Allura doesn’t want to go to a new galaxy without the remaining paladins being ready to fight.” Shiro’s voice is far away, tentative, even as he moves closer to Keith. 

“Good.” Keith just watches Shiro, because he can remember the desert. He can remember clinging to that heat when the cold got to be too much. “At least we didn’t almost freeze to death for nothing.”

He’s teasing, but Shiro still looks pale. “We shouldn’t have pushed so hard,” he murmurs. 

“If we save Hunk, it was worth it.”

Several ticks pass before Shiro nods and looks away, squaring his shoulders like he’s expecting a fight. He brushes Keith’s cheek and bites his lip again, looking unsure. “Look, I know how you feel about soulmarks, but I noticed that you didn’t... push me away before you knew.”

He looks tentative and unsure, like he’s afraid that Keith will run now that Keith knows that the marks aren’t complete bullshit, that his points him directly to Shiro. It doesn’t change the fact that he’s seen a lot of bad matches, their hollowed-eyed kids remembering bad fights as much as kids whose parents never matched.

But Keith doesn’t want to talk about philosophy or the past. He wants to chase that unsure look off Shiro’s face.

Keith sits up too fast, grabbing Shiro by the shirt and pulling their mouths together, because the knowledge that Shiro is his, has always been _his_ , is thundering through him. His other hand curls around Shiro’s arm where the mark had been, and his palm burns against the Galra arm. 

Shiro lets himself be pulled, opens his mouth to Keith’s tongue without a fight. The kiss isn’t gentle but hungry, all the missed chances and hidden desires filling it. Shiro’s other hand fists in Keith’s hair, and it hurts in the best way. 

“I’m such an idiot,” Shiro says, when they break for air, when Keith moves up onto his knees because Shiro is too damned tall and his back already aches. “I wanted it to be you.”

Keith grins and kisses Shiro again, quick and teasing. “It was me. It’s still me.” He traces the curve of Shiro’s jaw, his thumb brushing against a scar that traces along the line of his neck. “I love you. Even before this, since the garrison.”

Shiro kisses him again, surging forward, and Keith falls back against the bed. Shiro’s kisses are hot, hungry, and Keith maybe bites against them. He’s kissed before, has been in this position before, and he knows that he can be rough. He should pull back.

Except Shiro answers that roughness in kind, pressing Keith’s body down with his weight. One of his hands twists in Keith’s hair, just the right side of too much, and if it were anyone but Shiro, Keith would be embarrassed by the sound he makes, high and needy. 

“Well,” Shiro murmurs against Keith’s mouth. “We’ll definitely explore that.” He’s grinning, happy, and Keith huffs a laugh before he’s digging his knuckles into Shiro’s side. 

“Asshole,” he says, like he isn’t more than half-hard and wanting. 

Shiro’s eyes glitter in the shadows of his bunk before he’s leaning down and kissing Keith again, Shiro’s teeth nipping Keith’s lips as his thigh slides between Keith’s legs. They don’t talk as the kiss becomes desperate for more, as if the occasional click of their teeth can convey that they’re overdressed, that they’ve wanted. 

Keith pulls back first, sliding away from Shiro so he can pull his shirt up over his head, and Shiro’s human fingers immediately go to the mark. It burns, and in the dimness it almost seems like shimmers against Keith’s skin. 

“That’s not where I want your hands,” Keith says, his own fingers skimming up beneath Shiro’s shirt, exploring the texture of old scars before he can even see them.

“Bossy,” Shiro chides, but he helps Keith with his shirt. 

Keith shrugs and takes a moment to just look at Shiro, to admire his broad chest and shoulders and know that he can touch him anywhere, everywhere. His skin already feels too warm, like he’s going to burn through the sheets before they’re even naked. 

“You’re beautiful,” he whispers, because he knows Shiro hates the scars, what the Galra did. He lets how much he wants Shiro show on his face, no matter how embarrassing it is. He touches a long scar that bisects Shiro’s chest. It healed odd, with raised skin and jagged edges, and Keith leans forward and presses his mouth to that skin.

Shiro’s skin tastes like sweat and the weird Altean soap that smells like tangerines except smoky. His skin is smooth, just the hint of chest hair towards the middle of the scar. Shiro groans, one hand back in Keith’s hair, and he mutters something like _you don’t have to_. 

Except that means exactly that. He licks the line of the scar, from the start to the finish, hesitating only for a moment before he closes his teeth around the raised skin. He glances up at Shiro’s face, watching his face as he worries at the scar--softer, then harder until Shiro’s breathing comes in gasps. 

He stares at Keith as Keith moves his mouth lower. He concentrates on the scars, because each is a battle that Shiro won. Each is a fight that brought him closer to home, and that makes them beautiful to Keith because if Shiro hadn’t been so strong, they couldn’t be together. He can’t bring himself to say any of that, not even to Shiro, so he tries to show that emotion. 

Each time he looks up to Shiro, Shiro is staring at Keith, his face flushed so the scar across his nose stands out more and more. Keith can feel the heat under Shiro’s skin and the flush of his own skin, but he doesn’t want to stop. He wants to touch each scar, whether they’re smooth or rough under his tongue. 

When his teeth close around a scar low on Shiro’s abdomen, Shiro breaks. His hand tightens and pulls in Keith’s hair, bringing him up for a kiss, and Keith makes a desperate, keening sound that he would deny to his dying breath. 

It would be easier to finish undressing if they pulled apart, but neither one of them is particularly concerned with making things “easy.” Instead, they roll around on Shiro’s bunk, hands clumsy and kisses sloppy, and when they’re both finally, finally naked, it feels like an achievement. 

Keith rests his forehead against Shiro’s shoulder, listening to their ragged breathing and trying not to laugh. “We’re idiots,” he says, kicking off the last of his pants. 

Shiro’s laugh is softer, and he keeps looking at Keith, keeps brushing fingers over the mark, and the burn is less noticeable now, less overwhelming. He kisses Shiro’s laughter away, bringing that dark look back to his face that Keith loves, that he’d chase across the universe again. 

He pushes that thought away, biting along Shiro’s neck as he wraps as much of his hand around their cocks as he can. Shiro’s too tall for the angle to be good, but Keith loves it, loves the heat of Shiro’s cock against his own, the way his thumb can slide their precum together. It’s filthy and wonderful and too much, and Keith doesn’t want this to be over yet. 

“Will you fuck me?” he asks Shiro, a little foolhardy because he can feel the width of Shiro’s dick, knows that the burning of his mark will be nothing to how it will feel with Shiro pushing inside of him.

“Language,” Shiro murmurs with a smirk, which is much of a “yes” as Keith needs before he sits back on Shiro’s thighs. He keeps his hand on Shiro’s cock, lazily stroking as Shiro digs around for some of the oil that they’re supposed to use to relax their strained muscles after training. 

“Really?” Keith says as he takes it, like he hasn’t used the oil for nearly the same thing, like they all hadn’t laughed uncomfortably when Allura presented it to them and declared it would help them “relax.”

Shiro grins, sitting up. “Well, we’ve had a tense few days.” His hands skim over Keith’s thighs, almost skittish. “How do you want to do this?”

Keith already has oil on his fingers, rubbing it a bit to get it warm. “I want you to be able to touch me,” he says. “And I want to see you.”

Shiro’s eyes go darker, closer to black than grey. “Okay,’ he says, and his eyes flit to Keith’s fingers, where he’s already reaching back. He braces his weight on Shiro’s chest with one hand, knowing he can handle it. 

He hisses at the first finger, because for all his “relaxing,” he hasn’t had a chance to do this much since they formed Voltron. It’s an indulgence, something that takes too long and they might always be called away. He keeps his eyes on Shiro’s face, watching the way sweat starts to bead on his top lip. 

When he adds the second finger, when the stretch goes from uncomfortable to good, Shiro surges up and kisses him, nipping at his lip. It’s everything Keith can do to push him back down, to hiss, “Impatient,” even as he starts to get a rythym going with his fingers, when the slide starts to build heat low in his belly. 

When he looks at Shiro’s cock and wonders if two fingers would be enough, if the stretch would hurt instead of burn. 

“Get yourself ready for me?” Keith asks, barely pausing the thrust of his fingers in and out of his body. 

“I want a better view next time.” There’s a confidence, a dark knowledge in Shiro’s voice that makes Keith groan, because there will be a next time. This is something that they’re going to do.

Keith watches Shiro spread oil on his cock slow, teasing, and he licks his lips without thinking about it. There’s only a little shame burning his face, because he wants Shiro to see him like this, to watch Shiro realize how much Keith needs this. 

“Maybe next time, it’ll be your ass,” Keith says as an afterthought, when Shiro makes a grab for his hips, to line their bodies up.

“Maybe if I’m good.” And then Shiro slides himself into Keith’s body and it’s exactly what Keith wanted. The slide is good, air hissing out from between his lips as Shiro bottoms out. It’s so much and so good and Keith puts both hands on Shiro’s chest to keep himself steady, to hold himself together through the burn and stretch of it.

Shiro doesn’t move, his hands on Keith’s body again, hot and cold. He strokes over Keith’s mark, over the slope of his neck and the slimmest part of his waist. “Tell me how it feels,” he asks, voice strained from the effort to wait until Keith is ready, to keep himself from just grabbing at Keith’s hips again and fucking up into his body again and again.

When Keith can speak around his beating heart, he whispers, “So good, Shiro.” And he rolls his hips, pulling himself half way off Shiro’s cock and then pushing back down as fast as he can. It’s exactly what he wants, and when the next roll is faster, Shiro groans, one hand still on Keith’s mark. 

“You’re beautiful,” he murmurs, like he doesn’t know he’s saying it, and Keith lets the words wash over him, lets himself fall into the push of their bodies together and how good Shiro feels inside him. For this moment, it’s just them, and there isn’t a war outside the castle, with two of their numbers missing in space. 

Shiro’s blunt nails dig into the mark one more time before he’s wrapping his hand around Keith’s cock. His palm is still slick, warmed, and it feels incredible, feels like almost too much. He tries to keep his rhythm, tries to keep his hips moving in a regular pace, even with Shiro’s thumb pressing against his slit. 

“Open your eyes for me,” Shiro whispers, and Keith didn’t realize that he’d closed them. As soon as he looks at Shiro, though, a needy noise spills out from between his lips, because Shiro looks as wrecked as Keith feels, eyes large with need and bangs stuck to his forehead. Keith nearly loses it, nearly gives into that heat building in his body.

“Shiro,” he says, and it’s a whine. Any other time, he’d be embarrassed, but instead he’s just open, just needing, and he doesn’t care. He grabs for Shiro’s other hand, bringing the cold fingers up to the side of his face so he can pull two of them into his mouth. 

“Come for me, Keith. I want to feel it,” Shiro says.

Keith slurs, “Yes, sir,” around Shiro’s fingers and just lets himself fall apart, lets himself fall into the sensation of Shiro inside him and touching him and watching him, and comes hard across Shiro’s stomach and chest. 

It’s too much to have Shiro inside him, makes him cry out even as Shiro rolls his hips one more time before he’s following Keith. Keith makes himself keep his eyes open, watching Shiro’s teeth biting hard on his lip as his head tips back. He’s quiet as he comes, and Keith wishes he could hear him, wishes he could have made Shiro scream for him.

But there’s going to be a next time and a time after that.

::

When they join the others for dinner, they’re talking about the mind-connection and what went wrong. It wasn’t a complete loss, of course. Allura wasn’t able to get a crystal clear sense of where Hunk is. While it wasn’t as crystal clear as Keith and Shiro’s location, she can get them into the solar system. From there, her connection with the lions should be all they need.

And then they can get Lance. 

Pidge pokes at her goo before she says, “Maybe with Hunk, we can try Coran’s mind board. See if that will work well enough that we don’t need to try to connect with the lions.” She still has a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and she’s nursing warmed nunvill like it actually doesn’t taste like warm feet water. 

Allura and Coran share one of their “silly humans” looks. “Well, really, in your lions, the connection should be strongest--” Coran begins, puffing up like he’s going to begin a lecture. 

Keith cuts him off. “It can’t hurt. What if next time we have to roast in our lions? Humans don’t do much better with heat.”

Shiro nods. “I think it’s a good idea to try.”

And that is that, because Allura doesn’t seem any more enthused about trying it again than they are. If she had been human, the temperature in the hangar probably would have killed her. As it is, Coran is fussing over her as much as he is Pidge. 

The magic of the lions is wild and wonderful and apparently even she forgot how fucking dangerous it could be. 

They all go quiet, and Keith shifts closer in his seat, so his and Shiro’s thighs are almost touching. He doesn’t want to talk about this anymore, because they have their mission. They’re going to save Hunk; magic doesn’t matter right now.

Pidge takes another sip of her nunvill, barely shuddering before she glances over at Shiro and Keith. “It didn’t do that the first time?” 

Shiro shakes his head, and he gives Keith a careful look. “If it had, we’d be dead.”

Keith runs his hands through his hair because he knows that Shiro is giving him an out, like Keith is going to shut down all talk about soulmates because he’s always thought they were garbage. “I think it was putting Allura in the middle that made a magic focus. Green and Red weren’t happy about it.” 

And, because he’s a paladin of Voltron and a responsible human, he takes a long drink of his nunvill before he continues. It’s easier to concentrate on how his throat burns and how bad it tastes rather than the fact that he’s admitting, “And the magic might work different, considering that Shiro and I are, well.”

Shiro’s foot nudges his under the table, and Keith feels himself blush. He sets his glass down, and he tries to find a way to say it that doesn’t sound like a lovestruck child. 

Except Pidge sits up, and her grin is positively evil as she glances between them. “You and Shiro are?”

Shiro can’t hold in his grin as he reaches for Keith’s hand on the table. “We’re soulmates,” he says, and he’s so stupidly happy, almost proud that Keith feels bad for being embarrassed. He’s not embarrassed of Shiro--he never could be--but saying things out loud and publicly, even just to Pidge, Allura and Coran, makes him want to crawl under the table.

It’s going to be so much worse when Lance finds out.

Coran mutters something about the lions not being magic but advanced technology, but Keith has fought a Galra druid and Shiro’s stories of Haggar leave him cold. “It’s fucking magic, Coran,” Keith hisses. “Maybe just human magic, but we’re human and the lions are going to react differently to us.”

Coran’s mustache wiggles for a moment and then he claps his hands. “Then it would behoove the team to find Pidge, Lance, and Hunk’s soulmates. We could study this ‘human magic’ and see how the ‘magic’ interacts with Voltron’s technology.” He’s condescending, but there’s a fondness in his eyes when he looks at the paladins. 

Allura sits down across from Keith and Shiro, and her multicolored eyes are swim with warmth and cheer. “Congratulations,” she says, and she reaches over to put her hand where theirs are linked. “I’m so happy for you both.”

“Even if Keith doesn’t believe in soulmates,” Pidge says, and her smile is still evil but happy. 

“Even if.” Shiro kisses the top of his head, and Keith lets himself relax into it. He’s still blushing, but it’s hard to be sour in the face of all their friends being so fucking pleased for all of them. 

Pidge drains the rest of her nunvill and gets up from the table. “I want to work with you on seeing if there’s a way we can link without these two,” she says, adjusting her glasses. “Because if it’s really all about soulmates, then the rest of us are at a disadvantage.”

Allura makes a face. “I would think you’d like to rest,” she murmurs but stands regardless. 

“We’ll both sit in Green and try to link. We’re not going to search, so it shouldn’t be dangerous.”

Coran nods. “And I really do think, if we ever return to your galaxy, it would behoove the team to find the other soulmates. There would be worse things lurking in this human...magic,” he says the word with contempt, but Keith doesn’t care. 

“You do that,” he snaps, but there’s no anger in it. He drags Shiro’s arm around his shoulders so he can lean against his soulmate and wait for them all to leave, so they can be alone again. “Shiro and I are going to finish dinner and then we’re going to spar.”

It’s only when they’re alone that Shiro rests his head against Keith’s. “Sparring?” he murmurs, squeezing Keith’s hand.

Keith could say something filthy, like they hadn’t had to shower together twenty minutes ago to wash the scent of sex from their skin. Instead he drags Shiro’s hand over to his soulmark and searches Shiro’s face for something that he’s not even sure he has a name for. 

“You know that it’s not what makes me love you, right?” he asks, voice soft even though they’re alone. 

Shiro’s eyes widen, and he pulls Keith closer. “I love you, too,” he whispers, and Keith smiles, because he can wake up to that every morning now. He never has to worry again about Shiro going off to chase a fairytale. 

Because even if they have each other, there’s still war. Shiro still has flashbacks of what the Galra did to him, and Keith is still an orphan. Soulmarks might mean a happy ending in a story, but their matches still have to wake up and live after the story ends.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I can be found at locketofyourhair on tumblr, too, though I'm multifannish (largely dragon age, comics, and voltron). I mostly fill my queue and wander off.


End file.
